Hand care in the workplace implicates both work related activities and worker health. Hand hygiene is essential for certain activities and services including, particularly, healthcare, food preparation, and food service. Hand hygiene is important for virtually all workplaces to maintain a healthy environment and to limit spread of bacteria, viruses and other disease causing microorganisms. Hand hygiene can be accomplished by washing with soap and water and by using liquids such as a sanitizing product which does not require water or rinsing of the product. Hygiene products that are used for hand hygiene are commonly dispensed by dispensers that are located where hand hygiene is desired. Hand skin care products can promote worker health in avoiding and treating hand skin conditions that can reduce worker performance and productivity.
The spread of healthcare acquired infections, also known as HAIs, has been an ever-increasing challenge in healthcare facilities. HAIs can result from transmission of bacteria, viruses, and other disease causing microorganisms from various sources such as a patient or environmental surfaces to another patient or surface via the hands of healthcare workers. A consequence of such transmission can be infection of a patient who was previously not infected. Health care facilities have battled MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus), VRSA (vancomycinresistant staphylococcus aureus), and other drug resistant microorganisms for many years. These problems have been more apparent in recent years. It is estimated that approximately 2,000,000 such HAIs occur annually in the U.S. alone, resulting in about 100,000 deaths. The extra costs associated with these infections are estimated in the billions of dollars.
Healthcare institutions seek to prevent and control the spread of HAIs. One important aspect of such efforts is seeking to ensure that health care professionals comply with hand hygiene best practices. One way to monitor compliance with hand hygiene best practices is to monitor use of hand hygiene product dispensers. Use of such dispensers indicates that hand hygiene has occurred. Dispensers have been adapted to report use such as dispensers disclosed by U.S. patent application Ser. Nos. 12/823,475 and 13/427,467 which are assigned to the applicant of this application and are incorporated herein by reference.
The World Health Organization has identified five moments of hand hygiene in a healthcare setting. Those five moments for hand hygiene actions are: 1) before patient contact; 2) before performing an aseptic task; 3) after body fluid exposure risk; 4) after patient contact, and 5) after contact with patient surroundings. These five moments provide guidelines for hand hygiene within a healthcare setting. Compliance with such guidelines may be evaluated based on monitoring the number of hand hygiene events at locations within a healthcare institution at each of the five moments.
Compliance with guidelines or recommended practices for hand hygiene may be monitored using one of a number of approaches including direct observation, tracking product consumption, and more recently electronic monitoring systems. By using a low cost electronics to monitor hand hygiene dispenser usage events, a compliance rate can be ascertained for a predetermined area of interest over a predetermined time period.
Some low cost monitoring systems rely on the dispensers being in fixed locations, so that the dispenser usage events that are captured are assigned to the correct area of interest. However, such dispenser monitoring systems are not capable of monitoring dispensers fixed to portable equipment since the system cannot determine where the equipment was when the usage event was captured. It may be possible to use RTLS (real-time locating system) technology to track the position of portable equipment/dispensers within a facility. However, this approach does not qualify as ‘low-cost’ solution as it requires the installation of an extensive RF infrastructure that breaks down the facility into zones in order to correctly triangulate the position of any given dispenser. Triangulation systems are also subject to a substantial amount of position error absent line of sight conditions.
Other issues arise as alcohol based hand sanitizers become more commonplace in healthcare environments. Such issues include theft and, in some cases, consumption of the products. Some existing systems attempt to secure the product bottle against an ‘easy’ theft. However, they are generally based upon a ‘knack-open’ approach that does not withstand a prolonged attempt to gain access. Further, existing point-of-care dispensers often employ “easy fix” mounting options, such as a clamping arrangement in which the whole dispenser is easily removable should the perpetrator not be able to remove just the product pack.
Accordingly, the present inventors have recognized a need for a point-of-care dispenser that: 1) can be securely installed in a wide variety of locations; 2) is securely lockable to fully prevent the theft of the hand hygiene product; and/or 3) can be integrated into a low cost hand hygiene compliance monitoring system whereby dispenser usage events are captured and assigned to a relevant predetermined area of interest.